Hello

I have an 8channel soundcard and a discreet ac3-input (6-channels) in my amp WITHOUT a decoder integrated...

how can i mix in surround now? am i right, that i do not have to encode and then decode again? cant i just put the filters each bus to feed the amp?

or do i need these circle surround srs-wow-plugins or a dolby decoder... (but then i'd have to encode it before, also in realtime?)

please help me on this one or tell me where to get help.

thanx
kza

then why would you call those inputs ac3?


if your final mix will be old prologic or prologic 2 then dolby recommends mixing through
encoder / decoder, simply becouse the process isnt perfect, that shouldnt matter if your final format is ac3. (basically your software must be able to patch selected tracks onto selected hardware outputs...)

edit: btw, there are lots of info on dolby.com (search for 'mixing 5.1' should spit out some pdfs to read, they vary from very general like listening room setups to very specific dolby-digital thingies - often in the same doc..., there should be an interesting read about dolby metadata, but i guess that wont be so interesting if your not really a dead serious pro.)

Its labelled like that on the amp, its a cheap one


Do i understand that right???

I wanna mix in logic/samplitude/protools... e.g. logic where i can use the surround-function.

then i wanna bounce to 6 tracks and then encode an ac.3 file in softencode...


What u wanna tell me is: if i can assign the 5.1 channels to the inputs, i simply have to mix with filters on the 6 busses as they "please me, or sound good for me"????? and then encode it in ac.3?

thx 4 ur help anyway, i really wanna do this...


any recommended literature (can be very detailed, though)

thx again
kza

protools are definately beyond my audio mixing knowhow, but i guess that is the correct
way of doing things, and yeah i saw that joystick positioner thingy. (well, not sure exactly about how that 6th bass channel is generated, but i guess there are several options..)

edit: for starters:
off/voice - center
music - fl and fr (bass), can go backward when needed
eff - fl, fr, rl, rr, bass
it eff - are usually recorded with stereo mics , like 2 times for each pair, at least that i was told, but there are 4 channel mics out there as well.

what filters?
dolby.com